Reducing Risks Through Adaptation Actions

Adaptation Implementation Is Increasing

Adaptation planning and implementation activities are occurring across the United States in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Since the Third National Climate Assessment, implementation has increased but is not yet commonplace.

Adaptation has five general stages: 1) awareness, 2) assessment, 3) planning, 4) implementation, and 5) monitoring and evaluation, as shown in Figure 28.1,17,18 although these are also known by other terms (see, for example, the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit at https://toolkit.climate.gov/ and the University of Notre Dame’s Collaboratory for Adaptation to Climate Change at http://gain.nd.edu). Adaptation is an ongoing process in which organizations and individuals repeatedly cycle through the process shown in Figure 28.1, though specific adaptation efforts can follow different routes through these stages (e.g., California Emergency Planning Agency and California Natural Resources Agency 201219).

The Third National Climate Assessment (NCA3) found that the first three stages were underway throughout the United States but with limited on-the-ground implementation.18 Since then, the scale and scope of adaptation implementation have increased, including by federal, state, tribal, and local agencies (see Vogel et al. 2017, Halofsky et al. 2015, Leggett 2015, Ray and Grannis 2015, Wentz 2017, and the many examples of adaptation implementation in this chapter and elsewhere in this report14,20,21,22,23). For instance, Miami-Dade County’s Capital Improvement Program is addressing hazards related to sea level rise, as is San Francisco’s 2015 Seawall Resiliency Project. It remains difficult, however, to tally the extent of adaptation implementation in the United States because there are no common reporting systems, and many actions that reduce climate risk are not labeled as climate adaptation.14 Enough is known, however, to conclude that adaptation implementation is not uniform nor yet common across the United States.24

Figure 28.1: Five Adaptation Stages and Progress

An infographic showing five stages of adaptation centered around leadership, partnerships, and stakeholder engagement. The five stages are awareness, assessment, planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. The figure also compares the current status of implementing this process with the status reported by the Third National Climate Assessment in 2014. The comparison shows progress has been made in the awareness and assessment stages since 2014, but even greater progress has been made in the planning and implementation stages.

Adaptation actions in the United States have increased in part due to 1) the growing awareness of climate-related threats and impacts and the risks these pose to business operations and supply chains (Ch. 16: International, KM 1), critical public infrastructure and communities, natural areas and public lands, and ecosystems; 2) the wider recognition that investing in adaptation provides economic and social benefits that exceed the costs; and 3) the increasing number and magnitude of extreme events that have occurred.14

Box 28.1: Department of Housing and Urban Development National Disaster Resilience Competition

Rebuild by Design is a design-driven approach to create innovative local resilience solutions conducted in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy (http://www.rebuildbydesign.org/about#comp456). It was structured to connect local communities with some of the Nation’s leading design firms to identify and solve problems collaboratively and to address vulnerabilities exposed by Superstorm Sandy. The design solutions for the winning proposals ranged in scope and scale from large-scale green infrastructure projects to small-scale residential resilience retrofits. The competition process strengthened the understanding of regional interdependencies, fostering coordination and resilience both at the local level and across the United States. Ultimately, nine projects were selected for implementation and received Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery funding totaling $930 million.

While the level of implementation is now higher than at the time of NCA3, the scale of adaptation implementation for some effects and locations seems incommensurate with the projected scale of climate threats.25 Communities have focused more on actions that address current variability and recent extreme events than on actions to prepare for future change and emergent threats.14 Communities are currently focused more on capacity building and on making buildings and other assets less sensitive to climate impacts. Communities have been less focused on reducing exposure through actions such as land-use change (preventing building in high-risk locations) and retreat. Furthermore, many communities’ adaptation actions arise and are funded in the context of recovery after an event, rather than taken proactively. Often, such adaptation is not as comprehensive as suggested by best practice guidance, as when adaptation plans address sea level rise but not other climate impacts. Few current adaptation plans seek to exploit synergies among various types of actions, and many plans pay little attention to the costs of actions or their co-benefits. Often explicit attention to evaluation and monitoring is scant or nonexistent.

Box 28.2: Adaptation Actions by Individuals

Many jurisdictions publish guidance to help individuals take actions to reduce the risks from natural hazards. For example, the city of Chicago suggests residents in flood-prone areas take the following actions before a flood:26

Avoid building in a floodplain unless you elevate and reinforce your home.

Elevate the furnace, water heater, and electric panel if susceptible to flooding.

Install check valves in sewer traps to prevent floodwater from backing up into your home.

Seal walls in basements with waterproofing compounds to avoid seepage.

Keep an adequate supply of food, candles, and drinking water in case you are trapped inside your home.

Managing the Challenge

Public- and private-sector decision-makers have traditionally made plans assuming that the current and future climate will resemble the recent past, an assumption known as stationarity.27 The assumption is often made explicitly. For instance, in order to design a new dam or to negotiate contracts on future deliveries of hydropower and irrigation water, a water agency might use probability distributions for precipitation and extreme flow events that are based on past or current streamflows in a watershed. In other cases, this assumption is made implicitly, as when a city issues building permits for coastal properties using current flood maps without updating them to reflect projected sea level rise.